The Loner 19, page 1
part #19 of The Loner Series
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When they came charging at him with guns blazing, Blake Durant had no choice but to kill the two young men he’d never seen before. When the gun smoke cleared, he took the bodies in to nearby Lodge Creek, figuring to report what had happened and find out why they’d been so set on killing him.
Instead, Blake found himself accused of murder and quickly thrown into jail.
The townsfolk reckoned he was part of an outlaw gang that had raided the town a few days earlier, and they wasted no time in sentencing him to hang.
Help came from an unlikely source … and as the town burned around him, Blake fled with a strange assortment of companions—the town mayor, whose son had been one of the men Blake had shot down, the mayor’s daughter Jennifer, whose whole life had been overshadowed by her bullying father, a hapless bank manager who wasn’t sure he could find enough backbone to fight the outlaws when they came in pursuit … and the town marshal, who had sworn to make sure that, one way or the other, Blake would keep his date with the noose!
THE LONER 19: LOSERS DON’T COUNT
By Sheldon B. Cole
First published by Cleveland Publishing Co. Pty Ltd, New South Wales, Australia
© 2019 by Piccadilly Publishing
This electronic edition published October 2022
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
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This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book / Text © Piccadilly Publishing
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Table of Contents
Chapter One – Blood Trail
Chapter Two – “Hang Him!”
Chapter Three – The Raiders
Chapter Four – The First Evening
Chapter Five – In Full Control
Chapter Six – A Long, Long Day
Chapter Seven – Kill or Die!
Chapter Eight – Ride, Hellion!
About the Author
Chapter One
Blood Trail
THE TRAIL CLIMBED steeply, then levelled out along a plateau and pursued an even course for another two miles before it reached a pass. Blake Durant reined in to rest his black stallion, Sundown, and from the mouth of the pass he looked back over the tortuous, sun-scorched miles he had travelled.
There was no sound and nothing moved. Skeletal trees and sun-bleached boulders met Durant’s tired gaze. It was territory as inhospitable as any he had ridden through in the last two years on the drift. In fact it was country that only the foolish, or a man driven by desperation, would enter. Durant did not know yet whether the man he was trailing was a fool, or a desperado. All he knew was that the man left bloodstains in the dust when he stopped. And that the stops had become more frequent until the rider ahead could manage to push on for only a mile or so at a time before resting.
Durant came out of the saddle and inspected the ground. He felt a strange kinship with this man he did not know. The trail sign told him that since noon he had picked up a lot of ground on the rider. He was now only half an hour or so behind. By sundown he could reach him and learn what the man was running from, and perhaps why. He could be a dude on a foolhardy trip or an outlaw on the run, or a man wounded and delirious from loss of blood and the scorch of the sun. Whoever he was, it was obvious he was nearly spent, and Durant felt obliged to catch up with him.
Durant stood tall, looking about him. His broad shoulders were slumped now from the strain of his trail weariness. His steel gray eyes seemed to mirror the bitter memories of his past and there was a hint of deep-seated pain in his hard, tough and otherwise expressionless face. He thought of the past he wanted to forget, and could not ... a past he was drifting to escape from ... a past which always, in the silent, lonely hours, returned and lay more hurt upon him. Would it never end ... the memories of the woman whose picture he carried ... of the good life theirs had been and would never be again?
Pulling himself out of his moody contemplation of the past, Blake went back into the saddle. It was clear the man he was following had given up trying to wipe out his tracks. His earlier attempts had been a spur to Blake’s curiosity about him. Turning Sundown, Blake rode into shadow at the mouth of the pass and proceeded slowly along the ragged, boulder-strewn track that lay between the towering cliffs on either side of him.
The afternoon’s heat became worse, causing him to shed his hide coat. He rode with the coat across his thighs, hearing nothing above the monotonous clip-clop of Sundown’s hoofs on the hard ground. Half an hour later he halted and drank, looking ahead to the end of the pass. Beyond the walls of rock he could see nothing but the endless emptiness of the sky, telling him that the ground fell away and soon he would be trailing down to pasture country again. He wondered what the next town would be, and where, and if the man he trailed knew where he was going.
Blake came out of the pass and paused to survey the distance before him. A long way ahead, perhaps two hours away, he could see sunlight glinting on water of a creek or river. He decided he’d make camp there.
Negotiating the top of the slope, he cut his own trail downwards and had once again fallen prey to his memories of the past when a sudden blast of rifle fire caused Sundown to rear in fright. Caught unawares, Blake was almost thrown from the saddle, but by hugging the big black’s sides with his knees and drawing the horse’s head down with a quick tug, he managed to stay in the saddle. A second bullet burned past his neck and he swung the horse, drew his gun and stared searchingly ahead at the boulder-strewn country.
The sound of the rifle fire had begun to fade when a horse charged out from behind a boulder and came straight at him. Blake saw the rider lying on the horse’s neck, holding a rifle out in front of him in one hand. Then a third gunshot came from the top of the same boulder, which was now some fifty feet behind the oncoming rider.
Blake wheeled Sundown, and held his gun high. He saw that the charging rider was no more than a boy, even though his eyes were filled with a man’s hatred. A fourth crack of rifle fire missed Blake only by inches and he sighted a man’s hat shifting along behind the boulder. Blake fired off a shot and the hat went whirling into the air. A head showed briefly, just long enough for Blake to see that it belonged to a young man. Then the oncoming rider was sitting upright, knees clamped on his horse’s sides and the rifle lifting to his shoulder.
Durant had no idea who the rider was but realized that if he didn’t take care, he’d never know another thing in his life. The youth was only thirty yards from him now, eyes bright with premature triumph and Blake decided it was no time for talk.
He hurled himself from Sundown’s back, hit the ground and rolled. When he stopped against brush, a burst of gunfire tore the brush away from his shoulder. Blake jerked his gun up, cursing under his breath, and when the young rider slowed, taking more careful aim this time, Blake put a shot into him. The bullet hit the youth in the left shoulder and lifted him from the saddle. He landed heavily on the seat of his pants, gave a grunt, but quickly jumped to his feet. He jerked the rifle up for another shot at Blake.
Blake had no choice then. His next shot hit the youth in the chest and sent him reeling, screaming in pain, down the slope. Blake rose to his knees and then stood up. The boy’s horse had come on and gone past him, lifting a slight screen of dust which momentarily hid the down trail from Blake’s gaze. But as the dust settled, a second horse came charging up at him. Blake watched the rider come on, saw the gun lifted high at the boy’s shoulder, and again cursed under his breath.
“Damn you, why?” he bellowed above the pounding of the horse’s hoofs.
Then the second rider was within range, wheeling past the youth lying on the slope, his face twisted into a mask of anger and hatred. Blake knew that once again it was a case of kill or be killed, yet something deep within him made him loath to kill. When the other fired off a shot which missed Blake by feet, Blake carefully aimed. His gun jumped in his hand and his bullet slammed into the boy’s shoulder, lifting him from the saddle and sending him into a clump of brush. He crushed the brush under him, rolled out of it and cracked his head against a small boulder.
Blake saw him try to rise, and heard him call, “Willie!” Then he slumped down unconscious.
Blake caught the youngster’s horse, tethered it with Sundown and walked down to where the pair of them lay no more than ten yards apart. He inspected the first of them and found him dead. The other was breathing, but there was a deep wound in his shoulder. Blood was flowing freely from the wound and saturating his shirt. Blake pulled a bandanna from the boy’s neck, propped him against the boulder and tied it around the wound.
He then removed his own bandanna and tied it about the boy’s head which carried a three-inch gash just short of his hairline. That done, Blake fetched the horses, took his canteen from the saddle, and bathed the wounded youth’s forehead. When the youth did not stir, Blake went through the saddlebags belonging to both youths but found nothing to reveal their identity.
The heat which had plagued him all that long day began to die. He looked down to where the silvery line of the creek cut across the prairie. Then he packed both youths onto the horses and made his way down the slope.
Blake had dug out a shallow grave near the creek bank. He was on the point of burying the dead youth, when the wounded youngster stirred. Blake turned to study him and found the boy’s eyes filled with accusing bitterness. His lips moved but no sound came from him. Blake walked across to him, stopped a few feet away and held his stare evenly.
“Now maybe you’ll tell me what that was all about, boy,” said Blake.
The youth shifted along the tree stump Blake had propped him against and looked away. His gaze went over the creek bank, to the horses and settled finally on the outstretched body of his companion.
The color drained from his face and a nerve twitched in his temple. Then his look came back to Blake and deeper hatred flashed in his eyes.
“They’ll ... they’ll hang you, sure,” he muttered. “You killed Willie.”
“It was him or me,” said Blake. “It was you or me, too, but I let you live and I’m damned if I know why. So you start talking, boy, and try to make enough sense so I don’t kill you yet.”
The youth licked his lips and sweat ran down his face. Blake saw his eyes roll up and his lips and hands tremble. Then the youngster gulped hard as if he couldn’t get enough breath into his body and his head slumped forward on his chest. Blake caught him before he fell sidelong, discovered he had passed out and laid him down. He bathed his face and neck, and when the youth still had not come to, he washed up in the creek and squatted there, frowning deeply.
It was clear that neither youth was the man he had followed throughout the day. Then who were they? Blake asked himself. And what were they doing in this godforsaken section of country? Why did they fire at him, with definite intent to blast him down? He judged their ages to be no more than nineteen or twenty, with neither of them filled out to a man’s size. The dead youth’s hands had never known a hard day’s work and his clothes were those of a person who prided himself on appearances.
There being no way yet for him to get answers to these questions, Blake gathered some wood and made a fire. He put coffee on to boil, then opened a can of beans and warmed them in his old trail pan. He ate his supper, watered the horses and still avoided the chore of burying the good-looking, expensively clothed youth. He spent some time checking the creek crossing for tracks but there was no sign of where the man he had followed earlier had crossed. Yet he would have needed water desperately.
Returning to the camp, he was in time to see the wounded youth dragging himself across the ground to where his dead companion lay. Blake stopped and watched him, saw him tug at the dead boy’s boots. When he got no response, he dragged himself up alongside him. The youth’s eyelids were scarcely open, and so much sweat ran down his face that it gleamed as if he had immersed it in the creek. Then he suddenly became aware that Blake was watching him.
Blake said, “How far to the nearest town?”
The youth turned his head as though to ignore Blake and grimaced as pain ran through him. Blake saw that his neck had swollen up a great deal and the bandanna around his shoulder was soaked with blood.
“If it’s not far,” said Blake, “I might make it there with you. A sawbones might be able to stitch you up again.”
The boy’s lips tightened and he struggled to his knees and then to his feet. He stood swaying from side to side for a full minute before he said hoarsely, “You get to Lodge Creek, scum, and they’ll hang you!”
“How far?” Blake asked him coolly.
The youth raised his right hand to his wounded shoulder and brought it away smeared with blood. He wiped it down his pants leg and said viciously, “You stinking scum. You killed Willie! I’ll tell ’em and they’ll hang you sure!”
The youth moved unsteadily forward as he spoke and finally made a lunge at Durant. The big man caught the raised fist and held him at arm’s length. There was no strength in the boy’s attempt to draw back, and then his knees buckled and he collapsed again at Durant’s feet.
Blake stretched him out on the ground and looked bleakly across the prairie. A ring of hills closed out most of the western sky, and to the east there was nothing but desert wilderness. But directly ahead there was grass and a cool evening wind. He filled his canteen and roped the two youths back on their horses. He got back into the saddle and crossed the creek, leading the horses behind him. He rode into the last of the daylight, knowing he should sleep, but driven on by a desire to know why two young men, both strangers, should have tried to bushwhack him.
He rode easily, and Sundown showed no signs of slackening. For four hours into the night he kept going south, across country which now and then showed wheel tracks. An hour after that, he came upon a bunch of cattle and then the main trail which broadened as he rode along it. Finally he reached another creek which had a bridge across it. He went to the other side, rode up a brief rise and found lights winking back at him from a fair distance ahead.
Checking on the wounded youth, Blake found him muttering deliriously. He carefully washed his face and neck, and used a spare bandage of his own to replace the blood-soaked bandanna on the wounded shoulder. Then, unable to help him further, Blake pushed on again.
Two hours later he forded a shallow creek and rode into the dusty street of a trailside town. The wide street divided the town into a row of dwellings on one side and business premises on the other. Only a few lights still showed from a couple of homes, and across the street from what appeared to be a saloon and a rooming house. At the far end of the street, light spilled from what looked to Blake to be a jailhouse.
He headed for that last light, drew rein at a warped hitchrack, and wearily climbed down. The wounded youth was murmuring again and Blake checked him, forced water between his lips and muttered, “Won’t be long now, son.”
At the sound of Blake’s voice, the youth’s eyes opened but he said nothing. Blake discovered that the building was indeed a jailhouse. He went towards the door but was still some feet away when it suddenly opened and a big man with a tin star on his shirt stepped into the lighted doorway. The sudden light temporarily blinded Blake Durant, and he turned his head aside, moving a step backwards.
“What the hell’s this?” the lawman asked.
When Blake didn’t answer him, the lawman swept him aside and strode to the first of the horses. He stopped dead when he saw the body tied across the saddle, and flicked a hard glance at Blake, then lifted the youth’s head. Blake saw the lawman’s eyes go wide with shock. Then he wheeled, glaring furiously at Blake, and said, “It’s Willie Malder, the mayor’s boy! What happened? Where’d you find him?”
Before Blake could reply, the second youth moaned in pain. The lawman hurried to him, pulled his head up and gaped again.
“Jud Wiles!” he exploded and lowered the youth’s head against the side of the horse. He wheeled again, studying Blake Durant with undisguised hostility.
“Mister,” the lawman said tersely, “this is going to tear this town apart. The mayor’s boy and Jud Wiles, one dead, one near dead.”
Blake wiped dust from his Levi’s and put on his hide coat. He dug his tobacco pouch from his shirt pocket and started to make a cigarette. Whatever happened from here on he knew he wouldn’t become further involved. He would explain the attack and the defense of his own life. Then he’d leave it to others to work out why the youths had attacked him. Perhaps Jud Wiles would give them all the answers, if he pulled through.
Blake was about to start his own explanation for a second time when a voice faintly croaked, “Sheriff ... Sheriff Latimer?”
The lawman swung about again, and saw that the Wiles boy was trying to look up at him from where he hung over the saddle of his horse.
The wounded youngster licked his lips and said slowly but clearly, “Sheriff, Willie went right at him. He tracked him down and found him ridin’ easy. Willie didn’t make no bones about it, just went right at him, like he always said was the only way to do things. Only he didn’t make it.”
